


Singing the Same Line All Over Again

by museless22



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-16
Updated: 2014-11-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 07:44:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/595228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/museless22/pseuds/museless22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma finds herself stuck reliving the same horrible day. (Character death but I promise it's not permanent.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The blaring of an alarm clock was truly the worst sound in the world. Seven in the morning. Emma longed desperately to roll back over and let sleep claim her once more but gone were the days when she could give in to self indulgence. She was the sheriff now. Respectable. Responsible.  
  
God, how had that happened? Damned kid and his face, giving her grand ideas of permanence and stability.  
  
Mary Margret was rushing around the kitchen when Emma, dressed but still bedraggled, stumbled down the stairs. The woman looked ready to head out, already dressed in coat and hat, and Emma frowned at the wall clock. It was early yet, well ahead of the teacher's typical schedule.  
  
"Oh, hey Emma!" Mary Margaret said, smiling at the blonde's tussled appearance. “Sorry can’t stick around for breakfast, I’m running late. The kids have this science fair thing- See you for dinner later?”  
  
"Sure. Should be back by then." The great thing about working in a near crimeless town was she rarely had to stay late at the office. She was always on call technically, being a team of one plus a handful of volunteers, but she could always get away with ducking out early.  
  
Mary Margaret was gone almost before Emma had finished her response and the sheriff waved at the slamming door. "Have a nice day then."  
  
It was a cold morning, like most every other she'd experienced in jolly old Maine, and Emma pulled on her own fuzzy bobble topped knit cap before stepping out into the crisp morning air.  
  
Her timing was perfect, the routine already ingrained after such a short amount of time. She arrived at the street corner past Granny's just as Henry did, backpack slung about his tiny shoulders and face stretched in a grin, and walked him the rest of the way to school while he chatted animatedly along side her. Then she doubled back to the diner for her morning bear claw and coffee (Though she'd already had a mug prior to leaving the apartment and would probably have another from the pot at the office when she arrived; It was a vice and she knew it but damned if it wasn't worth it.)   
  
She arrived just as a black Mercedes pulled up to the curb, and that may have been intentional as well though she would never admit it; If she knew the Mayor's schedule as well as her own it was only because she felt safer being aware at all times of the volatile woman's whereabouts.  
  
"Miss Swan."  
  
"Morning, Regina."  
  
And if she ogled the Mayor's ass a little as she followed the other woman inside, well, she had put Emma through enough hell that the sheriff had earned the right to look every now and again.   
  
"Donuts, Sheriff, really?"  
  
"A skirt in twenty degree weather, Madam Mayor, really?"  
  
"That's hardly comparable."  
  
"You're judging my breakfast. I reserve the right to judge your legs."  
  
"Judge or leer, Sheriff? There's a difference."  
  
Emma turned red to her ears, though they were blessedly hidden beneath hat and curls. "I don't leer. Self absorbed much?"  
  
"Eye. Stare. Ogle. Gaze at longingly. Take your pick."  
  
"Some-body's got word of the day toilet paper."  
  
Regina rolled her eyes as Granny handed over her espresso. "No, just a vocabulary broader than a neanderthal’s."  
  
"Such sweet things you say."  
  
Watching the Mayor walk away from the counter with a smirk and a cocky sway in her step, Emma supposed the woman's legs got the last word after all. There was some definite 'eyeing' going on.  
  
It was as she was accepting the powder pink pastry box that she heard it, the unmistakable crack of a gun.   
  
Emma thought she must be mistaken, it must have been a car backfiring because things like that just didn't happen in Storybrooke, but then there were screams and the box of donuts splattered on the floor as she rushed to pull her own sidearm and see what all the commotion was about.  
  
Sydney was the last person she expected to see, muttering something about the bitch who wouldn't get out of his head as his hands trembled around a silver revolver.  
  
"Drop it! Hands where I can see them!"  
  
He complied almost immediately, dark eyes almost looking surprised as the gun clattered to the ground. "I just had to make it stop. I had to get her out of my head." He said in a small, dazed voice.  
  
"Her?"   
  
It was only then Emma saw the body crumpled on the sidewalk, so much red against a black trench coat.  
  
"Oh god."  
  
########  
  
Twelve hours. Twelve long hours of pacing the waiting room floor and wringing her hands while Mary Margret and a pale faced Henry looked on and when Dr. Whale finally emerged, lips set in a hard grim line, Emma put her fist through a wall.   
  
In the end it was decided the boy would go home with Emma and his teacher, at least temporarily. Regina didn't have any family and evidently hadn't put enough stock in her own mortality to have any sort of safety net in place.  
  
He was stony through the ride home and the dinner neither of them touched but the tears came later, when sleep failed him and he crawled into bed with her. Emma's heart shattered into a thousand tiny pieces as she held his trembling little body in her arms.  
  
########  
  
Emma awoke ten minutes before her alarm was set to go off, finally conceding defeat to her scattered, unpleasant dreams. She felt as though a great weight had settled onto her chest, compressing heart and lungs and bringing an almost physical pain with each breath she took. Her hand, at least, felt better. She'd expected the wall bruised knuckles to smart and throb for days. She’d been lucky, really, not to have broken anything.  
  
When she rolled over she saw that Henry was no longer there. Indeed, there was no trace of his presence anywhere in the room, the discarded sneakers and his backpack gone. The boy had probably been even less able to sleep than she had; He must have risen early and prepared for the day already. She could smell coffee brewing, maybe he was having breakfast with Mary Margaret.  
  
She swung her legs over the mattress, toes curling as they came into contact with the cold hardwood floor. "Here's hoping for another banner day..."  
  
When she got downstairs however she was greeted only by the sight of Mary Margaret, running around the kitchen in a state of dishevelment, one shoe on and in the middle of draping her scarf around her neck. “Oh hey Emma!” She said when she saw her roommate hovering at the bottom of the stairs, and Emma was struck with a sudden overwhelming sense of deja vu. “Sorry can’t stick around for breakfast, I’m running late. The kids have this science fair thing- See you for dinner later?”  
  
“Um--What? Wasn’t that yesterday? Where’s Henry?”  
  
Mary Margaret frowned at her in a concerned sort of way as she pulled on the missing shoe. “On his way to school himself, I suppose? Emma are you feeling alright?”  
  
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Considering."  
  
The feeling of strangeness lingered as she watched her roommate rush out the door as though everything was perfectly normal. She couldn't believe that Henry had just left, and that Mary Margaret had let him go alone, but then the kid was hurting so maybe he had just wanted some time to himself. She resolved to stop in and make sure he'd made it to school in one piece on her way to work and set about getting ready for the day ahead of her. The sheriff’s office was the last place she wanted to be but something needed to be done with the man sitting in lockup and while she felt ill equipped to handle it she was the only law enforcement the town had. Until she handed him off to the state for trial the responsibility fell squarely on Emma’s shoulders.  
  
It was as she was walking by Granny's, hands shoved in her pockets against the cold and chin tucked snug in the collar of her jacket, that her deja vu took a turn to the truly insane.  
  
She didn't think anything of the mayor's sleek black Mercedes being parked out front other than experiencing a brief spasm of pain at the sight of it; Who would have moved it, after all? It had certainly never crossed her mind to do so, though she supposed someone would have to take care of it eventually.  
  
When the driver's side door swung open, however, emitting a familiar head of brown hair, she froze in place as surely as though her feet had sunken into the sidewalk beneath them.  
  
"Regina?!"  
  
"Miss Swan. Can I help you with something?" She was dressed as she had been the day before, pinstriped skirt and trench-coat and the black scarf draped around her neck, lips starkly red in the grey of the morning air. Emma couldn't help but reach out to touch her, fingers shaking as they came into contact with a solid shoulder. Then she pulled the suddenly stiff backed mayor into a full on hug, delighted half crazed laughter spilling from trembling lips.  
  
"What the hell--"  
  
"You're alive! You're-- You're alive!"  
  
"Miss Swan, have you lost your mind? Of course I'm alive. Now unhand me this instant."  
  
Emma drew back, though she maintained her grip on the other woman's shoulders-- And it was notable, perhaps, that Regina permitted it. "Is-- Was it all some kind of joke? Because I have to tell you, Madame Mayor, that's sick as hell. Henry-- Oh god. How could you--"  
  
"Whatever are you rambling about?" Brown eyes searched Emma's, looking for a moment almost concerned. "Are you ill?"  
  
Regina was honestly clueless, that much Emma could tell from the worried knit of the woman's dark brows and the confused line of her lips. Emma thought she might just kiss them, such was the relief flipping and swooping in her belly.  
  
What the hell was going on?


	2. Chapter 2

It had to have been a dream. Some kind of crazy freaky so realistic she could still recall the feeling of the other woman’s blood slipping sticky and red between her fingers in vivid detail dream. So realistic she could still taste the bile in her throat and feel the crush of knuckle against plaster and replay with clarity every nuance of that last smirk that had passed between them. 

Emma had never had dreams like that, even as a vastly more imaginative child. They had always been blurry and boring, even the nightmares never memorable. And she couldn’t even begin to explain how her subconscious had somehow managed to conjure up her roommate’s behavior, their conversation, even Regina’s dress. 

Regina had slipped off a glove to press the back of her hand against the blonde’s forehead as though to check for fever and Emma couldn’t even tell her to cut it out. She could barely breathe.

“Normal enough. Not physically ill then, I suppose. As for your mental state, well I’ve long suspected you have--”

“Regina, shut up for a minute.”

“Excuse m-”

“Ah.” Emma clamped a hand over the brunette’s mouth to shush her, ignoring the distracting twist of silken flesh beneath her fingers and the smoldering brown eyes that threatened to separate her from the limb permanently. “I need to think and you’re not helping.”

This was different, at least. They hadn’t lingered outside yesterday-- In her dream. “Regina, what do you remember about yesterday?”

“Allowed to talk now, am I?” The mayor jerked away from Emma’s grasp, brushing imaginary dust off the shoulders of her coat where the blond had touched her. “Yesterday? We had a city council meeting. That you were late to. Again. How shocking that you’ve forgotten it already.” Regina rolled her eyes.

“And it’s Tuesday? Today? It’s Tuesday right?”

“Yes, Sheriff, it is Tuesday. What’s this all about? Feeling overworked already? It’s not too late to run another election. That fool reporter is clearly not up to the task but I’m sure I can find a suitable replacement.”

Emma shook her head. “Nothing. I guess, nothing. I’m sorry, I just had the strangest dream...”

“Oh, speak of the devil. If you will excuse me, Sheriff.”

“What?” Emma turned to see Sydney stalking down the street towards them, disheveled in his wrinkled, less than dapper suit and long tan overcoat. His tie was crooked and tossed over his shoulder where it flapped about with each step like a royal blue banner. His dark eyes were wide with crazed determination and Emma didn’t need to see the glint of sunlight on the muzzle in his shaking hands as he raised it to know how events were going to play out.

There was no decision made, just the Mayor’s name being ripped from her throat as Emma spun to push her down behind the car and the crack that seemed to echo for ages and a sudden blooming pain in her back. Burning, burning, burning like nothing she had ever felt or imagined and heavy liquid seeping. They landed in a heap, her weight crushing Regina’s smaller, more delicate frame into the oil stained tarmac of the street and was it insane that all Emma could think about was the perfume tickling at her nose? Cinnamon. Maybe just a hint of something a little like vanilla.

“Sheriff?!”

“I always...apples. Woulda’thought apples.”

“Sheriff! Miss swan? Emma...Emma!”

The last thing Emma was aware of before the blackness reached up to drag her under was Regina screaming her name, the first time she could ever recall hearing anything other than her surname or title from the Mayor’s lips, frantically over and over.

Emma, Emma, Emma...

########

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Emma jerked awake and immediately toppled out of bed, scrabbling and clawing at her own back. There was nothing there, just smooth if sweaty flesh over top the familiar musculature and she lay panting on the floor in a twist of blankets as the phantom pain finally faded away.

Had she died? Was she dead? Emma felt as though she must have, could almost feel the way consciousness had been ripped away from her body, but here she was, solid and whole on the hardwood floor in her bedroom. Real breath in her lungs, real jersey cotton sheets beneath her fingertips and twisted round her legs. Real pale winter sunlight streaming through the window.

No heaven or hell or angels or whatever. Alive.

‘That shit wasn’t a dream. No way it was a dream.’

Emma stumbled to her feet and almost tripped down the stairs in her rush to get down them, stubbing her toe on the banister when she finally skid to a halt on the landing but too full of shaky adrenaline to register the stabbing pain. 

There was Mary Margaret, as she had been the morning before, and the morning before that. Rushing around the kitchen dressed to leave for work, scarf akimbo. 

"Oh, hey Emma!" Mary Margaret smiled, the same smile, and Emma could only gape. “Sorry can’t stick around for breakfast, I’m running late. The kids have--”

“A science fair thing, yeah I know.”

“Oh. Did I tell you already? Silly me, scatterbrained. See you for dinner later?”

Emma scrubbed a hand through her messy blond curls, shrugging her shoulders helplessly. “Yeah, I guess.”

“What the unholy FUCK?” She shouted, once the door had closed safely behind her roommate’s back. The expletive only marginally improved the pressure of emotion stirring in her chest. She was going insane, that was the only logical explanation. Crazy cakes off the wall totally fucking bonkers. 

Premonitions weren’t real, if she could even call it that. She was living through it, whatever the hell it was. The same day. Like someone hit a giant reset button.

‘Henry would blame magic.’

Magic. Right. She should just check herself into a mental institution right now. Assuming Storybrooke had one, which she doubted. 

She could go see Hopper. Maybe he would give her a referral.

Or she could just get the hell out of dodge. 

Emma glanced at the wall clock. This time yesterday she had been getting ready to head out the door. The day before that she had been out the door already and heading back to the diner after seeing Henry off to school. So she could change things in this delusion, at least in minor ways. The big constant seemed to be Sydney. 

God she had to stop Sydney. Was that the point? Was some higher power, God or fairies or whatever the hell Henry thought made the world spin round trying to get her to stop the tragedy before it happened? Or was she sitting in a padded room somewhere, tormenting herself by trying to work through a way she could have fixed things and Regina already dead and buried?

Neither way seemed fair but Emma couldn’t see she had much choice but to try as she pulled on her jeans and grabbed her belt-- The sheriff’s belt with her cuffs, badge and sidearm-- before running out the door as fast as her feet would carry her.

########

“Drop it! I know you’ve got a gun, Sydney, drop it! Now!” 

She’d cut him off at the stoplight two blocks away from the diner where presumably the Mayor was now having her morning espresso uninterrupted. He was startled and coming apart at the seams and as much as she wanted desperately to hate him, she couldn’t help but feel he must have suffered some form of mental break. The reporter was almost complacent as she kicked away the dropped fire arm and snapped on the cuffs, mumbling things that didn’t make sense to her. Something about someone in his head, which she assumed had something to do with Regina given what she’d heard from him before (She was still thinking of it as the day before yesterday, because trying to put it in any other context made her head ache and throb.), and a he telling him to take back control.

Legally there wasn’t much reason to hold on to him this time but Emma felt a hell of a lot better locking him in a cell on charges of carrying an illegal firearm until she figured out what to do with him. The man clearly needed help and he wasn’t in much state to argue. 

Tracing the gun would make a good start. Emma wanted to have a long, violent dialogue with whoever had put the weapon in the reporter’s hands in the first place. She was convinced it was a recent acquisition and whoever had sold it couldn’t have been completely oblivious to the man’s intentions.

First, however, she had to pay a visit to a certain tyrant. Her heart wouldn’t stop bouncing around in her chest until she’d seen the woman, whole and kicking.

Emma let herself relax as she hoofed her way over to town hall, basking in the barely there warmth the sun offered as it reached its peak. That was it then, wasn’t it? The day would progress. Nobody dead. Crazy averted. She almost could have skipped.

“We don’t have an appointment today, Sheriff.” Regina didn’t even look up from her paperwork when Emma burst through her office door, boredly scrawling her signature. “I suggest you turn around and waltz right back out. You have a job to do now, remember?”

It was tempting to smack that smug condescension off the woman’s red lipped face, but remembering the pain and the loss and all the things she’d wished she’d said and done Emma settled for kissing it away instead, strolling around to the other side of the Mayor’s desk and pulling her up by the lapels. Regina’s protests were muffled by the press of soft lips and finally melted away all together as she sank into the blonde’s embrace. Fingers dug into Emma’s belt loops, pulling their bodies closer together, and she felt contentment flare in her belly as that sweet, sweet perfume washed over her.

“Oh yeah.” Emma said when they finally broke apart, gasping. “We are definitely doing that again. Often. Every day.” 

“We’ll see, Sheriff.” She looked like she was trying to affect an intimidating glare, but it was a hard look to pull off when her hands were still firmly wrapped around Emma’s hips, lips all bruised and smudged. “Now I really do have work to do. And so do you.”

“We’ll talk. Later?”

“Dinner. Tomorrow. Seven. If you can be bothered to be on time.”

“Only for you, Madame Mayor.”

########

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Emma shut the alarm off, stretching lazily. Today was going to be a good day, she was certain of it. If not a good day, certainly a good evening. Spent with her child. And his mother. 

The mother of her child.

God she was turning into such a sap.

She flounced gracelessly into the kitchen, still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, only to be greeted with a whirlwind of activity.

"Oh, hey Emma!" Mary Margaret smiled. “Sorry can’t stick around for breakfast, I’m running late. The kids have this science fair thing- See you for dinner later?”

No. No no no no no no no no no.


	3. Chapter 3

The next night-and several more after- Emma attempted staying up the whole night through, only to realize that no matter what she did, no matter where she put herself and no matter how much caffeine she imbibed, she simply couldn't. As near as she could tell the event (Which she had begun to internally refer to as the ‘giant reset button from hell’.) struck at midnight. She'd never yet made it past 11:59.

In a bout of desperation she had jumped in her Bug and fled towards Boston, only to wake snug in her bed again the next morning. She'd performed what was tantamount to kidnapping Regina and Henry and fled for the hills again the following day, resulting in a rather spectacular engine explosion as soon as the car rolled across city limits (Something she still puzzled over.). She'd attempted setting her alarm back to give herself more time--But it reset much the same as everything else did--, had tried running out the door as soon as she'd woken, barefoot and desperate, to lock Sydney up, had even on one memorable occasion tried locking away Regina (The image of the woman handcuffed to a chair in the Mayoral mansion’s elaborate study wasn’t one she’d soon forget.) but nothing had any effect. It didn't seem to matter what she did or to who, every morning dawned the same as the one before, and the one before that until she couldn't even be sure how many days had really gone by. All her attempts to leave herself notes, a record, anything, even writing then, somewhat madly, _carving_ a tally of days into her own skin, had failed just as horribly.

“Sooooooo...”

“So?” Henry’s expression was bordering on down right delighted, lips smudged red with ketchup from a cheeseburger that had been almost bigger than he was. The book was a heavy presence on the table beside them. It seemed almost ominous, sitting innocently though it was next to the saltshaker, like a living thing. Or an anvil. An anvil that had been tied around her neck. It spoke of her mental state that Emma was feeling such animosity towards a book, of all things. She wasn’t even sure it was linked to her current predicament. Though admittedly it was a pretty big coincidence that the town the kid claimed was stuck in time was suddenly, well, stuck in time.

So there she was, seeking advice from her ten year old son. Whom she’d only bribed with junk food a little bit.

"Are there any stories in there about...About people being stuck in time?"

Henry quirked a brow at her in an expression he had most definitely picked up from Regina. "Well, yeah. The curse-"

"I mean besides the curse. I mean someone stuck, ah, reliving the exact same day. Over and over."

He frowned thoughtfully, pushing his crumb laden plate (Four little pickles still stacked forlornly on the edge because, as he had said when he’d peeled them off, “Eeeew.”.) to the side so he could flip the fairy tale book open. Pages turned easily beneath his fingertips, the crisp paper rustling up a distinctly old-book-smell must. "There's one kinda like that."

"Yeah?" Emma tried not to let her eagerness show but she was literally on the edge of her seat, booted feet bouncing with barely contained energy. It was lucky all her antsy jittering didn’t upend the table.

"Yeah. It's kinda boring-This couple, their families hate each other and don't want them to be together. The girl, Mera, she thinks her prince died so she drinks this poison that'll kill her when night comes. Only he's alive and he goes to Rumpelstiltskin and asks for something that'll let their last day together last forever."

"That boring and you just knew it off the top of your head, huh?" Emma grinned as the little boy's cheeks tinged ever so slightly pink.

"It's just sappy, not a lot of action. In Snow White's story-"

"Stay focused kid." Emma tapped the book, now open to an illustration of a young couple. The girl, all done up in a fancy purple gown, looked surprisingly heart broken for a two dimensional painting. Looking at her starkly drawn expression, Emma could almost feel her pain pouring off the page. "How'd he get out of it?"

“Well... He didn’t. Rumpelstiltskin didn’t tell him that he wouldn’t even remember making the deal and their village spent forever trapped reliving the same day, not knowing it.”

“ _Forever_ forever?”

“Forever until the curse, of course.”

“Of course.” Emma sighed, all the hope his story had sparked deflating in an instant. “Do you think it could happen again, here?”

She could see the wheels turning in that little brain of his, knew he was on the verge of asking her where this line of questioning was coming from. She might even tell him- He wasn’t going to remember this conversation come tomorrow anyway, what was the harm?

“Here? Even if there was magic here, that was kind of like his happy ending, I guess. And the curse took all of those away. So she’s probably... Gone. And he won’t remember.” It didn’t sound like much of a happy ending at all to Emma, but then the prince guy hadn’t known he was living the same day over and over again. Maybe ignorance was bliss? Knowing certainly wasn’t.

“Why so interested in this story anyway?” That frown, ever so vaguely suspicious, was all Regina too.

“Because,” Emma squirmed in her seat then leaned across the table so he could hear her whisper, “Because. I’m stuck. I’ve been living this same fu-er, same day over. For-” She thought back over her jumbled mental count finally shrugging. “For a while now.”

Henry’s eyes visibly widened, his excitement almost palpable. “Really? That’s so... So cool!”

Cool? Really? But of course she should have known he was the one person in the world who would believe straight away anything she shared with him. She felt a pang of guilt knowing she hadn’t cottoned on to his stories with the same enthusiasm. Especially now that they were maybe possibly even _probably_ true. “Not the word I’d use, kid.”

“What’s it like? What have you done? Have you done anything cool? You could do anything you wanted and no one would remember... Does anyone else remember?”

“No, no. Seems to just be me.” Emma chose his last question to latch on to, because really, she hadn’t held much appreciation for that line of thinking before. She could do anything. No consequences. It was a thought to stick a pin in, anyway.

Of course, given her luck the day she decided to go crazy with would be the one that stuck. “It’s... A nightmare, actually. The same horrible things keep happening and I don’t know how to stop it. Or if I can stop it. I've tried everything I can think of- Even when I save everyone it doesn't help.”

She hadn’t known how badly she needed to talk to someone about it until it was out there, spilling fast and desperate from her lips, the elephant that had been sitting on her chest for the last week at least now traipsing freely around the room. And there was that guilt again because the last thing the wide eyed, sweet little ten year old boy needed was to be burdened with her crazy. It was already too late though; Henry had his determined face on, decided to help her as soon as she’d opened her mouth. She still sometimes couldn’t believe such a thoughtful little person had been created from her genes.

“Maybe if you could figure out who Rumpelstiltskin is here? He’d know what to do for sure. Though maybe you shouldn’t-- Just if you do, be careful what you ask for. It never seems to end very well.” He flipped through the pages again, settling on an image that looked more creature than man with almost golden, scaly looking skin and a wild mane of hair. He didn’t look anything like anyone Emma had seen around town. Except maybe... There was something vaguely familiar about that expression but she couldn’t connect it specifically with a face.

“Or you could... maybe you could just ask my mom.”

“What?” Emma blinked, drawn from her perusal of the illustration.

“She’s the Evil Queen, right? And the Evil Queen’s a really powerful witch. If anyone would know about magic or whatever that could do this, it’d be her. And the great thing is if you mess it up,” And she was dearly tempted to smack him for looking so like he thought she might, “She won’t even remember you asked tomorrow! If it includes her. It includes her, right?”

Emma thought back over the varying degrees of shock, surprise and outrage she’d witnessed on the Mayor’s face over the past few days and nodded stiffly. “Oh yeah. It includes her, I’m pretty sure. No one acts _that_ well.”

“So basically you can ask her however you like. And if she gets mad it won’t-” He paused suddenly, lower lip jutting out in something like a pout. “Hey- I’m not going to remember this either, am I?”

Emma shook her head, reaching to pat his tiny hand fondly. “Nope. ‘Fraid not, kiddo.”

“Ah maaaaan... Will you tell me all about it again? When you figure it out?”

“We’ll see. Can I borrow this?” She drummed the fairy tale book lightly with her fingertips. Come the next day she would have to ask him for it again... And again. And probably again and again, until she had the relevant bits memorized or until it just became too tedious to deal with. “For research?”

“Of course you can.” His grin stretched from ear to ear. “Keep it as long as you like.”

########

“Miss Swan- Unless it’s an emergency I really must insist you contain yourself until office hours. Kindly remove yourself from my porch.”

Emma had caught the mayor on the woman’s way out the door- She now knew precisely the second Regina had left the house that morning and it was possible, if she hit the ground running immediately upon waking, to make it just in time- and had planted herself there, arms stretched from one edge of the door to the other as she leaned heavily on the frame. Her body was shaking from the combination of cold and exertion, golden curls in tossed in wild disarray about her face, and Regina eyed her bare feet and still pajama clad body with the corner of her mouth curled downwards.

"Gone homeless, have we?"

Emma had rushed over with every intention of demanding answers, determined to extract them with whatever means necessary, but standing less than a foot away and breathing the same air, the words "You can do whatever you want! No consequences." rolling around in her brain, she found all plans escaped her.

 _Whatever she wanted_.

The image of a hospital bed with a sheet drawn up, all wires and cold, blood on her hands that now had never really been there but would never really leave, bruised knuckles and Henry's salty tears assaulted her and she decided that she could take just this one day for herself. Just one selfish, consequence free day.

She was gentle, quietly intense as she seized the Mayor’s upper arms and pushed until they hit the wall in the mansion’s entry way. She captured Regina’s lips as the force of hitting the wall kicked the breath from her lungs, latching on like a woman drowning.


	4. Chapter 4

"I must say, Miss Swan, when you decide to play hookie you certainly go all out..."

Emma gave the sensitive flesh beneath her lips one last kiss, drawing an almost pained groan from the woman above her and a none too gentle tug on the blond curls still fisted in her hands, before crawling her way back up to Regina's lips. It was worth it she decided, relishing the feel of skin on skin and the way sweat laden limbs stuck together. She would gladly relive a thousand days if it meant she got to do this.

"Really, Madam Mayor? You didn't have any problem saying 'Emma' a few minutes ago."

Regina sighed as Emma nipped at her bottom lip, nails dragging down the smooth plane of the Sheriff's back in a way that almost felt possessive. "That was different."

"Oh I see. What you're really saying is I fucked the formality right out of you." Emma wiggled her eyebrows, grinning as the fully expected smack connected with her shoulder. Though she was gratified to note there wasn't much force behind it; the Mayor's muscles were still rendered to a state of mostly mush.

It almost felt normal. Like they were lovers who did this all the time and not two people whose prior relationship, if it could even be called such, consisted mostly of animosity. She was still waiting for the other metaphorical shoe to drop, Emma realized. For Regina to kick her out, citing that even welcoming her in in the first place was a mistake. That the other woman was relaxed, comfortable, even almost basking in Emma's continued presence and affections was wonderful, but.... "You weren't surprised. When I showed up here, wanting this."

"Of course not, dear. I knew we'd end up here eventually. Granted I wasn't expecting you to jump me this morning, but..."

"Is that right?" Emma frowned but her heart wasn't in it. That cocky little shrug was somehow adorable and Emma lowered her body so they rested snug against one another, rocking teasingly so that the thighs still cradling her hip bones tensed deliciously.

"Yes. I decided I wanted you. And I always get what I want."

"You're lucky I find that arrogant streak endearing. Someone else might think you were just an ass."

Regina snorted, throwing her head back, soft brown locks all tangled on the pillow beneath her, but it was almost like laughter. Emma decided she liked the mayor best like this, soft and messy and warm beneath her fingertips. "Don't mistake me, Sheriff. I've consented to your day of debauchery but I have no designs on your affection. You can like me or not, whatever suits you."

Remembering the way the woman had frantically called her name on the day she'd presumably died, Emma couldn't help but feel there was much more beneath the surface but she let it slide. She couldn't very well start ranting about observations she had made on a day that for all intents and purposes hadn't even happened. She leaned with the intent of latching her lips to the silky skin of Regina's throat, determined to enjoy every last sensation while she had the chance, but was brought up short by the necklace glittering in the divot between the brunette's clavicles.

She hadn't noticed before, her need to get underneath layers and buttons to the flesh below taking precedence-And after all, Regina wore jewelry all the time it was surely nothing worth noting- but it was an unusual thing. Almost like a marble, no bigger than the tip of Emma's thumb, filled with some liquid that looked like gold turned fluid. It was strung along a simple black thong and Emma couldn't say she'd ever seen the mayor wear anything quite like it before. She brushed it with her fingertips, brows knitting together. "Where'd you get this?"

"Hm?" Regina reached up to cover Emma's hand with her own, frowning down at the bauble. "Oh. Actually... You know, I don't remember." She frowned, almost seeming pained as she evidently sifted through her memories for the necklace's origin, but finally shrugged. "I have a lot of jewelry it might have been a gift or something I suppose. Why does it matter?"

Emma shook her head, sending a cascade of blond hair fluttering around her shoulders. She couldn't think of any reason that didn't sound crazy. Maybe it wasn't connected at all, genuinely something the mayor had acquired years ago and forgotten about.

Regina sighed, hands diving behind her own neck to untie it and toss the thing aside on her bedside table. "There, if it's bothering you so much. Now kiss me Sheriff, before I change my mind and kick you out."

Emma did as she was told, hissing with satisfaction as sharp nails raked across her shoulders and into her hair, but the necklace remained a splinter in the back of her mind. Regina flipped them then, surprising Emma with her strength.

“Do you have any idea what I’m going to do to you, Sheriff?” She breathed directly in the blonde’s ear, lips closing around the lobe. Emma felt the soft flicking of a tongue and hands skimming down her front and was already lost, all thoughts of magic and curses deserting her. She fisted handfuls of sheet, silken and far softer than anything she’d ever lain on before, as two long fingers plunged inside her waiting warmth without warning. She was so wet, so embarrassingly ready, that it didn’t much matter and her inner muscles fluttered around the curling digits in welcome. Two became three, hard and fast, and she was crashing, clenching, over the edge before she was ready for it to be over, Regina’s name spilling from her lips on a moan. Regina slowed but still pulsed her fingers shallowly, chuckling softly against Emma’s breast. “I don’t think that was quite loud enough, _Em-ma_. Lets try again, hmm?”

########

_“You save her! You make her better!”_

_“I’m afraid I can’t, dearie. Your bonnie love decided to take a poison that lacks a cure. There’s nothing for it.”_

_“There must be something. You’re the Dark One! You have magic!”_

_Rumpelstiltskin shook his head, never yet looking up from his mixing bowl. The grinding of pestle against bowl grated against Leander’s nerves and he slammed his palms down on the imp’s worktable. The various assortment of bottles and tubes and other tools jumped in protest._

_“You can get angry all you like, come the end of the day she will be dead all the same.”_

_“Then I want this day to never end. I want my last day with her to last forever.”_

_“Now that,” Rumpelstiltskin pointed a single finger skyward theatrically. “I can do.”_

_The Dark One waved a hand over the bowl he’d been working with and the liquid it now contained, like pure liquid gold, rippled and solidified into a small glass ball. “When you get back to your village, place this ‘round your neck. You’ll never see the dawning of a new day.”_

Emma slapped the page, pointing at the illustration excitedly. “That’s it! It’s hard to tell from the drawing but I’m sure that’s it. She was wearing it.”

Henry looked positively insulted that she would treat his book so brusquely as to smack it. “Okay, okay. Don’t take it out on the book.” His little fingers reached across the table to smooth the pages she’d wrinkled with her enthusiasm, as though soothing a pet.

The poor boy had become her sounding board, though he didn’t know it. Some days she let him be blissfully unaware but others she desperately needed someone to bounce her crazy theories off of and he was the resident expert.

“So it was her then.”

“I guess so. Why would your mom want to stop time?”

Henry shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe she just wanted to fix what you undid. Put everyone back under. Anyway, she’s not going to be much help. She won’t remember.”

“Huh?” Emma looked up from her perusal of the illustration of the desperate prince, distracted.

“You know. Leander forgets once he puts it on. He’s as clueless as everyone else.”

‘So why do I remember?' Emma wanted to ask, but she was sure he would merely cite something about her being the Savior and therefore special. Hell, that might be true for all she knew.

“So I go to the source.”

“You figured it out? You know who Rumpelstiltskin is?” Henry perked up immediately, eyes bulging with excitement.

“I have a theory. I can think of only one place in town that has an endless supply of weird junk.”

She didn't mention that it was a theory she'd been sitting on for a while. He didn't need to know about the numerous days she'd wasted, lost in his mother.

########

"Oh, hey Emma!" Mary Margaret smiled. “I-”

“Science fair, running late, see you for dinner sounds good bye!”

Mary Margaret watched as her roommate, dressed in an odd combination of knee high boots and red leather jacket pulled over her pajamas, leapt down the last few stairs and ran out the front door.

“Huh. At least she’s up on time.”

########

Sydney was left disarmed and handcuffed to a light post with a clipped, “Cool off. Think about what you’re doing.” and then Emma was running again, just in time to catch Regina getting into her car. She took one glance at the sheriff’s attire and snorted. “Gone homeless, have we?”

“Oy you’re predictable.”

Emma reached for the Mayor’s throat, slapping away her hands when she tried to fight her off and wrestled the necklace from its place beneath her blouse. One sharp tug that had Regina pummeling at her chest with fists this time and the knot holding it together broke away in her hands.

“I promise I’ll explain this to you later and it’ll make sense.” She stole a quick kiss, earning a stinging slap to her left cheek, and took off again.

Mr. Gold was just turning around the ‘Open’ sign on his door when she arrived at the shop. She pushed in past him, breathless and panting, the little bell over the door jangling angrily in her wake. She took a moment to collect herself and her breath, bending over hands on thighs, and got her first good look at the shop’s merchandise through the hanging curtain of her hair.

A windmill. Endless baubles. A costume witch’s hat that looked like it belonged on Harry Potter. A surprising assortment of musical instruments. More things than she could number.

Emma turned, holding out the necklace for his inspection, and caught Mr. Gold watching her with an amused quirk to his brows. “I’m going to take a wild guess and say you know what this is?”

He twisted his cane into the floor, clasping the knob on top in both hands. “Oh, Miss Swan. I had wondered when you were going to turn up.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I know it's been like an actual eternity and I appologize for that. I had some really bad real life crap go down but anyway I'm back now and I plan to work on everything and hopefully make semi regular updates. I missed writing so much I can't even tell you. Assuming anybody's even still waiting for this you're wonderful and I adore you and I'm doubly sorry because I'm a little rusty.

"I must confess, Sheriff, once you realized your situation I had thought you would be much quicker at tracking down a solution. Enjoying ourselves a little too much, were we?"

There was absolutely no possible way he could know just the sort of fun Emma had been having but the suggestion made her skin burn with guilt and embarrassment just the same.

She couldn’t quite bring herself to look him in the eye and took interest in a mobile hanging from the ceiling instead, tapping the little glass unicorn figurines with her fingers so they spun and caught the light filtering in through the shop’s windows. Pretty. “I had… Other theories to work out.”

"Oh I’m sure.”

Smug bastard.“It doesn’t matter alright? What did you do? What is thing? What did you give her?”

Rumple gave a long suffering sigh. “It was a sort of, shall we say, trial run for the Dark Curse.”

The Dark Curse. Henry’s curse, Emma realized. Well, Regina’s curse. The one she’d cast to trap Emma’s parents. The one that had landed Emma herself on the side of highway in Main. One day soon she’d have to let her brain go there, she’d have to think about all of the that and what it meant, but not today. One curse at a time. Parents and Evil Queens… That could wait.

"One,” Rumple continued, oblivious to his audience’s inner turmoil or simply uncaring, “That I discarded for obvious reasons, I think. Imagine living the last few weeks as you have for twenty-eight years. In the end I went with a much more subtle approach. We were still frozen in time but with the opportunity for a little more…variety, shall we say. The illusion of time and free will. And of course the caster’s memories needed to remain in tact. I spent the better part of a century perfecting the formula.”

He was vibrating with barely contained energy, like a school kid showing off his A plus. Look what I did Ma’. I wrote the perfect curse, aren’t you ever so proud?

She wasn’t even going to ponder the fact that he was apparently more than a hundred years old. “That’s fine and dandy but why the hell would she do that?” Emma swallowed, a sudden lump forming in her throat. “It just got her….” Not killed. Not dead. She stopped that. She would always stop that. “Hurt.”

"She came to me, looking for a way to keep her curse from breaking that wouldn’t harm you. For the lad’s sake, I assume. If she happened to pick a day to repeat that ended rather unfortunately for herself, well, perhaps it’s, what do they call it? Ah yes. Karma.”

Emma’s heart clinched. Maybe for Henry’s sake. Maybe not. It probably wasn’t wise to get warm fuzzies about a woman who had literally cursed the whole town not once but twice just because the woman had tacked on an addendum of not letting Emma actually get hurt by it, but there it was just the same.

“So why do I remember?” She asked. “Hell, why do you remember? Why are you even willing to tell me all of this?"

"You’re the savior. You remember because I made it so. Even in the beginning, I made plans for loopholes. All who call this town home were cursed, much as the people in the village that housed my original…trial. And you, Emma Swan the orphan, you do not call this town home. Not yet, at any rate.”

Emma’s ears burned. He was right, of course. She was a wanderer. A runner. She had always been a runner. Home was her bug. Home was the soles of her boots on pavement. Things that couldn’t giver her away or hurt her. Maybe someday that could be Storybrooke. Maybe not. Maybe she’d fix this thing and hightail it back to Boston. If only there weren’t so many people here she was starting to care for, each one a link in a chain that was slowly attaching itself to an anchor for her heart.

“As for me…" He shrugged. “My interest in this little farce waned shortly after my own agenda was accomplished. From this point on allowing you to end it is in my best interests. And I daresay you’ll never get there on your own.”

Emma puffed her cheeks out, insulted, but hell, who was she kidding? Left to her own devices this thing would probably continue indefinitely.

Well, while he was feeling generous. “And Sidney? Where you responsible for that too?”

"A tragedy to be sure. He was… waking up. Having memories of being trapped in a mirror… Trapped by love for a woman who will never return it… I imagine it’s enough to drive anyone mad."

Trapped in a mirror. Emma tried to imagine the deranged reporter as the cartoon character she’d see as a child, telling Regina she was the fairest of them all.

“Yeah. Okay. So what do I do? Can you fix it?”

"That’s out of my hands now. There is a place in this town where that which is lost might be returned. I think you know what I’m talking about.” He lifted a brow significantly.

It took her a minute to get there and when she did she supposed she shouldn’t have been as flabbergasted as she felt„ considering. Still. The super corny touristy wishing well? Was that really a thing?

“When the one who cast the curse lets it go, it will be ended. Convince her she does want her curse broken.” He smirked. “Or perhaps that she does want to do you harm. Depending on which notion she was most desperate to hold on to, either one might do. “

“Get Regina to drop the thing in the place. Okay. I got this.” She didn’t have this. She was going to try to break a curse. A fairy tale curse. No one in their right mind could have that. Of course she didn’t have any delusions about being in her right mind at this point. She was talking to Rumpelstiltskin about the Evil Queen from Snow White as casually as one might talk about the weather. All well.

When in Rome. Or Fairy Tale Land, apparently.

Emma tucked the necklace away in her pocket. Something so powerful but it held no actual weight, it felt like nothing at all.

She was almost out the door when she paused, one last curiosity gnawing at her gut with something that felt an awful lot like dread. Rumpelstiltskin gave nothing away for free. That was perhaps the most pervasive theme she’d found in Henry’s story book. More than any morality or true love crap. The whole thing could easily read as a manual for what not to do where the man was concerned. She turned back, tangled curls falling forward across her face.

“What did she give you? For this?” She patted her pocket. “You must have asked for something pretty big.”

"Nothing she’ll miss." Somehow

Emma sincerely doubted that. “And…What do you want from me?”

"You’re going to break the Dark Curse, whether you mean to or not. I could ask for nothing more.”

#######################

Emma thought that it should probably be weird that it wasn’t weird that she had gotten the morning down to such a perfect routine but perhaps there was something to be said for muscle memory.

Actual shoes on feet. Check.

Crazy guy in lock up. Also check.

Henry safely to school. Probably?

She could spend forever making her lack of attentiveness during this whole ordeal up to him but really, he wasn’t going to remember anyway. She’d buy him ice cream later to assuage her own internal guilt and he’d be none the wiser.

Also if this was the day that stuck she should probably come up with some explanation as to why the sheriff was running around town in her pajamas like a maniac but eh. Maybe they shouldn’t elect almost strangers if they didn’t want to deal with the occasional weird. And maybe they would all remember they were fairy tale characters at the end of the day so there was that.

When the door to the mayoral mansion swung open Emma allowed herself a moment to drink the woman in, to memorize the lines on her face and the scar on her lip and the exact brown of her eyes. She could write endless poems about those eyes, if she had a single creative bone in her body. Something corny. Probably involving a coffee metaphor or two.

In any case these were all essential things that she had to catalogue right now this minute because she had no idea how the day would end and it might be her very last opportunity to do so. She would probably never be allowed as close as she had been again and the memories that were just hers, the days that happened but didn’t, those just didn’t seem like enough.

“Miss Swan- Unless it’s an emergency I really must insist you contain yourself until office hours. Kindly remove yourself from my porch.”

“Can it, Regina. I know what you did.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“I know what you did and we seriously have to fix it like, yesterday because if today happens one more time I am going to lose my mind. See? I’m not even sure that made sense.”

“Well you didn’t have very far to go, did you dear?” Regina’s lip curled upward in a sneer and she waved a hand dismissively. “I have to get to work. Take your mental break down somewhere else.”

"You’re the Evil Queen. I’m the… I’m the Savior.” It felt hard, getting that word out to describe herself. Like choking. Or drowning. “Only I don’t think you’re exactly evil anymore, I think Henry changed that. You cast a curse that trapped this town in time and then… Last night? I guess it would have been for you? You cast another one. Only now we’re really stuck in time. Like I could literally choreograph your entire day stuck in time. And you have to fix it. You have to help me fix it Regina, this can’t go on.”

Regina’s fingers flexed on her front door, and for a moment Emma feared it was about to be slammed in her face. “Assuming any of that nonsense it true… and I’m not saying it is… Why on earth would I want to help you fix anything?”

"Because you’ve changed enough that when you went looking for a solution you chose one specifically that wouldn’t hurt me. I think you already knew it was basically over but you couldn’t let go. I get it. I do. When you finally get something good you hold on so tight you break it. I do it too.” Emma peered at the woman through lowered lashes, feeling an uncharacteristic shyness, a vulnerability to admitting the similarities between them she’d noticed almost from the start. The other woman’s expression was unreadable, however, a mask Emma had come to know wasn’t her true face. Not by a long shot. “And I also know that living in the past… er, present… It isn’t living. It’ll eat you alive, if you let it.”

"You want to break my curse. You want me to voluntarily give up my happy ending.”

Emma wanted to point out that this ending didn’t seem particularly happy- least of all because Emma herself had to stop her from being murdered on a daily basis- but the admittance itself a victory and she didn’t want to lose ground by being glib. “Not the big curse just the little one. I mean, I guess we’ll have to deal with the big one eventually. I’m here. Things are happening, whatever that means. But I promise we’ll deal with it. I won’t let anyone hurt you. Or Henry.”

Emma felt a scratchiness at the back of her throat that most assuredly wasn’t tears. “But I can’t keep doing this. I can’t watch you die again, I can’t.”

Regina’s brows knit together in confusion and Emma hoped desperately that she didn’t ask her to elaborate because she was too raw and too tired to do it.

When she finally did speak her voice was small, hesitant. “I don’t even know what I did, let alone how to undo it.”

Emma felt the flutterings of hope stir in her chest. “Well, what kind of Savior would I be if I didn’t have a plan?”


End file.
